Try Something New

Today has been one of those busy summer days, spent getting packed to go on another adventure! I’ll be leaving Friday to spend 5 Days teaching in sunny CA and I’m looking forward to spending time with my art buddies, Lisa Bebi and Renee Richetts.

During my packing however, I picked up the last issue of Cloth Paper Scissors to add to my stash of airplane reading material. As I flipped through it Serena Barton’s Workshop article again caught my eye-this was something I wanted to try. I had the good fortune to meet Serena at Art & Soul via Lesley Riley and we are going to be roomies for Art Unraveled in August and I love her work!

What I loved about this article is that Serena didn’t use any pencil-no sketching-just paint to paper, building shadows and highlights and eventually adding details with a brush.

I worked off an image on the art info cards I had made up. I liked the idea of turning this statue like face into a real person. I practiced looking at the little image I was modeling my painting after more than at what I was doing on the paper and as I was only doing this on a piece of paper I really wasn’t worried with how it would turn out. It’s just for practice.

So following Serena’s tutorial I spent about a half hour working in little spurts between packing. I tried to work fast and step away to look at if from a distance. I really wasn’t concerned about the outcome, just wanted to play with the process.

I liked the process, it’s different from how I usually work. I learned some things I can incorporate into the way I already paint and most of all I found just a little time to create art today.

You are so creative! I am always so amazed at what you can create in a short amount of time with whatever tools you have at hand! I still have journal envy from what you created at the Dallas airport, for pete’s sake – and now this little gem on a piece of paper! You are my hero!

lol on journal envy;-) Anymore I don’t have large periods of time to just sit and create, so I try to use little bits of time to create art just for me with no purpose other than to enjoy the process. Even 15 minutes of this is good for the soul:-)